Follow by Email

Monday, 13 October 2014

Sticks and stones

For all that it had its high points and low points, there
are things about the referendum campaign that Scotland can be proud of, not the
least of which is the fact that so many folk turned out to vote after a debate that
was –for the most part- reasonably civilised, if often rather light on content.
Those of us who voted No should be mindful of the
disappointment that our friends and neighbours on the Yes side will be
feeling.I honestly don’t know how I
would have reacted had the vote gone the other way, but I do know that I felt
just as strongly about my vote as my friends on the Yes side felt about theirs.
I had to be prodded with a big stick before making my move and it was only in
the last couple of weeks of the campaign that I realised just how strongly I
felt about it. Had the Yes campaign prevailed, I would have been very
disappointed indeed, but I’d like to think that I would have had the grace to
accept the result. I’d like to think that I would not have disdained my fellow
Scots for deciding to take that leap of faith.And, if there had been a ten-point margin in the polls and 28 out of 32
local authorities had voted Yes, I don’t think I’d have been asking for a recount.

Accordingly, it has been disappointing to hear and read some
of the things that have been said in the aftermath of the vote. It’s as if some
folk are unwilling, or unable, to appreciate that it is possible for people to
look at exactly the same information but arrive at completely different
conclusions.

One common observation is that No voters somehow forced
Scotland to miss an opportunity. This overlooks the fact that something is only
an opportunity if the person who is offered it perceives it to beone. I
might, with the sincerest intentions, offer you an ‘opportunity’ to invest in
my new business. In such a case, you’d expect to consider the pros and cons
before making a judgement about whether or not the likely outcomes of that
opportunity outweighed the possible risks. Most people would apply this logic
in their everyday lives, so why shouldn’t they have applied it in a decision
about the fate of their country? It was incumbent upon the Yes campaign to
persuade enough people to vote against the status quo; for a variety of reasons,
most of the Scottish electorate was not convinced that the opportunities
outweighed the risks.

Surely only the most deluded Yes supporter can believe that
the way to rebuild an independence campaign (which is a perfectly legitimate aim)
is to start by traducing 55% of the population? But voting No, according to
some, was equivalent to expressing a desire to see more food banks, the dismantling
of the NHS and the west coast of Scotland obliterated in a nuclear attack.Reading and hearing some of the more
hysterical stuff, I’ve wondered if the folk who say these things are aware of
the contradiction between, on the one hand, their claim that they want to
create a newer, fairer, more compassionate Scotland and, on the other, the fact
that they are willing to describe 55% of the electorate as fools, quislings,
cowards or – my personal choice of nadir- victims of Stockholm Syndrome, a
psychological condition in which hostages start to have positive feelings
towards their captors. Presumably the folk who level that accusation are angry about
all of those English tanks rolling down our streets and the occupying troops arresting
anyone who has red hair or who is wearing a kilt. Pathologising the enemy
within was an old Stalinist trick. ‘If
you don’t agree with us’, so it went, ‘there must be something wrong with how
you think. Perhaps some time spent in a correction centre will help you to see
things our way.’ This is, in essence, a totalitarian impulse and one which has
no place in a civilised polity.

It is clear that, for some folk, political discourse is underpinned
by a received narrative which allows that the left somehow occupies the moral
high ground. It’s a nonsensical idea, but at least one of the positive side
effects of the referendum is that more people will now recognise it as such. Some
of my No-voting Labour friends were stunned at the extent to which their
intentions were impugned during the campaign, but I merely welcomed them to the
club; for anyone who sits to right of, say, Andy Burnham, this is what it’s
like all the time.

This desire to dismiss opponents as stupid, selfish or
uncaring has long been one of the great limiters to mature political debate and
we’d all be much better off without it. Many people don’t seem to understand
that to attribute negative emotional or intellectual characteristics to folk
who don’t agree with you is not a political argument; it’s the absence of a political argument.I can understand why it might make people feel
good (and by ‘good’, I mean ‘superior’) to dismiss their opponents as stupid, selfish,
or –in the case of the independence referendum- ‘scared’, but all that does is
absolve the accuser of the responsibility of actually winning an argument. When you use tactics like that, it doesn't say anything
about the other side; it says something about you.

Politics isn’t a vanity contest about who purports to ‘care’
the most; it’s a marketplace of ideas, a push and pull of competing
philosophies focused on how best to manage resources. And, however some folk might choose to deny
it, the truth is that these conflicting philosophies generally want the same thing:
the greatest outcomes for the greatest number of people. A political stance that,
primarily, makes you feel good about yourself is hardly a political stance at
all, because politics isn’t about you and it isn’t about me; it’s about us.
It’s about how we come to an accommodation with each other, how we find ways to
co-exist peacefully with people with whom we may have very little in common.

History tells us that there is no such thing as a perfect
world and no possibility of perfecting humankind. In the imperfect world we
inhabit, politics is -and always will be- a series of compromises between
intention, imagination, utility and will. Sometimes it will be pretty and
sometimes it will be ugly, sometimes poetry and sometimes prose. Grand ideas are all well and good, but the little details
are usually what count the most. As PJ O’Rourke succinctly puts it: ‘Everyone wants to save
the planet, but nobody wants to help mum do the dishes.’

All of the available evidence tells us that the left is
correct about some things and that the right is correct about others. Anyone who
thinks that politics really is as simple as ‘agree with me = good, disagree
with me = bad’ simply hasn’t given it enough thought.

About Me

A few years ago, I promised that I would never start a blog; this is it.
On this blog, I plan to respond to real (or imagined) slights by posting coruscating put-downs of my enemies, competitors and -occasionally- friends. I also plan to maintain the acrimonious simmering of a series of longstanding grudges and petty disputes.
But mainly, the blog will faithfully record a pointless and pedestrian series of idle musings, attempted libels and ill-considered theories about popular culture, sport, politics, music and the meaning of life.
For the last couple of years, I've been writing about an album I'm recording; yes, it's nearly finished.
The views represented on this blog are not necessarily endorsed by the author, unless they are.